Why they do not troublo T real if the separation of the real from the work of the mind is to be maintained. It must itself be the work of the compounding mind, which must be supposed again in 'abstraction' to decompose what it has previously compounded. Now, it is of the essence of the doctrine in question that it denies all power of origination to the mind except in the way of compounding and abstracting given impressions. Its supposition is, that whatever precedes the work of composition and abstraction must be real because the mind passively receives it: a supposition which, if the mind could originate, would not hold. How, then, does it come to pass that a 'nominal essence,' consisting of definite qualities, is constructed by a mind, which originates nothing, out of a 'real' matter, which, apart from such construction, has no qualities at all? And why, granted the construction, should the mind in abstraction' go through the Penelopean exercise of perpetually unweaving the web which it has just woven? 114. It is Hume's more logical version of Locke's doctrine that first forces these questions to the front. In Locke himhim more. self they are kept back by inconsistencies, which we have already dwelt upon. For the real, absolutely void of intelligible qualities, because these are relative to the mind, he is perpetually substituting a real constituted by such qualities, only with a complexity which we cannot exhaust. By so doing, though at the cost of sacrificing the opposition between the real and the mental, he avoids the necessity of admitting that the system of the sciences is a mere language, well-or ill-constructed, but unaccountably and without reference to things. Finally, he so far forgets the opposition altogether as to find the reality of 'moral and mathematical' knowledge in their bare ideality' itself. (Book IV. chap. iv. sec. 6, &c.) Thus with him the divorce between knowledge and reality is never complete, and sometimes they appear in perfect fusion. A consideration of his doctrine of propositions will show finally how the case between them stands, as he left it. 115. In the Fourth Book of the Essay the same ground has to be thrice traversed under the several titles of knowledge,' 'truth,' and 'propositions.' Knowledge being the Simple ideas, since the mind can operating on the mind.' (Book IV. by no means make them to itself, must chap. v. sec. 4.) necessarily be the product of things perception of agreement or disagreement between ideas, the proposition is the putting together or separation of words, as the signs of ideas, in affirmative or negative sentences (Book vi. chap. v. sec. 5), and truth-the expression of certainty consists in the correspondence between the conjunction or separation of the signs and the agreement or disagreement of the ideas. (Book IV. chap. v. sec. 2.) Thus, the question between the real and the mental affects all these. Does this or that perception of agreement between ideas represent an agreement in real existence? Is its certainty a real certainty? Does such or such a proposition, being a correct expression of an agreement between ideas, also through this express an agreement between things? Is its truth real, or merely verbal ? real, 116. To answer these questions, according to Locke, we The must consider whether the knowledge, or the proposition knowledge expressed which expresses it, concerns substances, i.e., 'the co-existence by a proof ideas in nature,' on the one hand; or, on the other, either position, though certhe properties of a mathematical figure or 'moral ideas.' If tain, may it is of the latter sort, the agreement of the ideas in the not be mind is itself their agreement in reality, since the ideas themselves are archetypes. (Book Iv. chap. iv. secs. 6, 7.) It is only when the ideas are ectypes, as is the case when the proposition concerns substances, that the doubt arises whether the agreement between them represents an agreement in reality. The distinction made here virtually corresponds to that which appears in the chapters on the reality and adequacy of ideas in the Second Book, and again in those on names' in the Third. There the complex ideas of modes and relation' are pronounced necessarily real adequate and true, because, 'being themselves archetypes, they cannot differ from their archetypes.' (Book II. chap. xxx. sec. 4.) With them are contrasted simple ideas and complex ideas of substances, which are alike ectypes, but All knowledge is certain according to Locke (Cf. vI. chap. vi. sec. 13, 'certainty is requisite to knowledge'), though the knowledge must be expressed before the term 'certainty' is naturally applied to it. (Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 3.) 'Certainty of knowledge' is thus a pleonastic phrase, which only seems not to be so because we conceive knowledge to have a relation to things which Locke's definition denies 6 it, and by certainty,' in distinction Certainty of truth' is, in like man- 2 Cf. Book II. chap. xxxi. sec. 3, and xxxii. sec. 17. when the concerns substan ces. with this difference from each other, that the simple ideas cannot but be faithful copies of their archetypes, while the ideas of substances cannot but be otherwise. (Book II. chap. xxxi. secs. 2, 11, &c.) Thus, the names of simple ideas and substances, with the abstract ideas in the mind which they immediately signify, intimate also some real existence, from which was derived their original pattern. But the names of mixed modes terminate in the idea that is in the mind.' (Book III. chap. iv. sec. 2.) The names of simple ideas and modes,' it is added, 'signify always the real as well as nominal essence of their species'—a statement which, if it is to express Locke's doctrine strictly, must be confined to names of simple ideas, while in respect of modes it should run, that the nominal essence which the names of these signify is itself the real.' 117. But though the distinction between different kinds of knowledge knowledge in regard to reality cannot but rest on the same principle as that drawn between different kinds of ideas in the same regard, it is to be noticed that in the doctrine of the Fourth Book knowledge concerning substances,' in contrast with that in which our thoughts terminate in the abstract ideas,' has by itself to cover the ground which, in the Second and Third Book, simple ideas and complex ideas of substances cover together. This is to be explained by the observation, already set forth at large,' that the simple idea has in Locke's Fourth Book become explicitly what in the previous books it was implicitly, not a feeling proper, but the conscious reference of a feeling to a thing or substance. Only because it is thus converted, as we have seen, can it constitute the beginning of a knowledge which is not a simple idea but a conscious relation between ideas, or have (what yet it must have if it can be expressed in a proposition) that capacity of being true or false, which implies the reference by the mind of an idea to something extraneous to it.' (Book II. chap. xxxii. sec. 4.) Thus, what is said of the simple idea' in the Second and Third Books, is in the Fourth transferred to one form of knowledge concerning substances, to that, namely, which consists in particular experiment and observation,' and is expressed in singular propositions, such as this is yellow,' this gold is now solved in aqua regia.' Such knowledge cannot but be real, the 1 See above, paragraph 25. truth must proposition which expresses it cannot but have real certainty, In this case because it is the effect of a body actually operating upon general us' (Book IV. chap. xi. sec. 1), just as the simple idea is an be merely ectype directly made by an archetype. It is otherwise with verbal. complex ideas of substances and with general knowledge or propositions about them. A group of ideas, each of which, when first produced by a 'body,' has been real, when retained in the mind as representing the body, becomes unreal. The complex idea of gold is only a nominal essence or the signification of a name; the qualities which compose it are merely ideas in the mind, and that general truth which consists in a correct statement of the relation between one of them and another or the whole-e.g., 'gold is soluble in aqua regia holds merely for the mind; but it is not therefore to be classed with those other mental truths, which constitute mathematical and moral knowledge, and which, just because merely ideal,' are therefore real. Its merely mental character renders it in Locke's language a trifling proposition,' but does not therefore save it from being really untrue. It is a trifling proposition,' for, unless solubility in aqua regia is included in the complex idea which the sound 'gold' stands for, the proposition which asserts it of gold is not certain, not a truth at all. If it is so included, then the proposition is but playing with sounds.' It may serve to remind an opponent of a definition which he has made but is forgetting, but 'carries no knowledge with it but of the signification of a word, however certain it be.' (Book IV. chap. viii. secs. 5 & 9.) Yet there is a real gold, outside the mind, of which the complex idea of gold in the mind must needs try to be a copy, though the conditions of real existence are such that no complex idea in the mind' can possibly be a copy of it. Thus the verbal truth, which general propositions concerning substances express, is under a perpetual doom of being really untrue. The exemption of mathematical and moral knowledge from this doom remains an unexplained mercy. Because merely mental, such knowledge is real-there being no reality for it to misrepresent—and yet not trifling. The proposition that the external angle of all triangles is bigger than either of the opposite internal angles,' has that general certainty which is never to be found but in our ideas, yet conveys instructive real Book IV. chap. xi. sec. 13, xii, 9, &c. Mathematical truths, since they concern not substances, may be both general and real. Significance of this doctrine. 2 1 knowledge,' the predicate being a necessary consequence of the precise complex idea' which forms the subject, yet not contained in it.' (Book IV. chap. viii. sec. 8.) The same might be said apparently, according to Locke's judgment (though he is not so explicit about this), of a proposition in morals, such as 'God is to be feared and obeyed by man.' (Book Iv. chap. xi. sec. 13.) But how are such propositions, at once abstract and real, general and instructive, to be accounted for? There is no 'workmanship of the mind' recognised by Locke but that which consists in compounding and abstracting (i.e., separating) ideas of which it cannot originate one.' The abstract ideas' of mathematics, the 'mixed modes' of morals, just as much as the ideas of substances, must be derived by such mental artifice from a material given in simple feeling, and 'real' because so given. Yet, while this derivation renders ideas of substances unreal in contrast with their real originals,' and general propositions about them trifling,' because, while intimating an existence,' they tell nothing about it, on the other hand it actually constitutes the reality of moral and mathematical ideas. Their relation to an original disappears; they are themselves archetypes, from which the mind, by its own act, can elicit other ideas not already involved in the meaning of their names. But this can only mean that the mind has some other function than that of uniting what it has 'found' in separation, and separating again what it has thus united -that it can itself originate. 118. A genius of such native force as Locke's could not be applied to philosophy without determining the lines of future speculation, even though to itself they remained obscure. He stumbles upon truths when he is not looking for them, and the inconsistencies or accidents of his system are its most valuable part. Thus, in a certain sense, he may claim the authorship at once of the popular empiricism of the modern world, and of its refutation. He fixed the prime article of its creed, that thought has nothing to do with the constitution of facts, but only with the representation of them by signs and the rehearsal to itself of what its signs have signified-in brief, that its function is merely the analytical judgment; yet his admissions about mathematical Just as according to Kant such a proposition expresses a judgment 'synthetical,' yetà-priori.' 2 Cf. Book IV. chap. iii. sec. 18, and Book II. chap. xi. se 16 |